Ethics In Affiliate Marketing

As affiliate marketers we know most of the products or services we’re promoting are complete bullshit and some are out right scams. We can play it off and say it’s their fault for signing up and not reading the fine print for that “Free Trial Offer, Only Pay $1.95 For Shipping!”, that really ends up charging them like $100 a month. Top that off with terrible customer service/support and a refund policy that’s so stressful and difficult most people won’t bother.

It really dawned on me today when I had about 10 minutes in between classes and I went to the computer lab to check on my campaign stats. I sat beside this girl who was just in the process of filling in one of those oh so common cell phone pin submit offers. I wanted to say to her, “you know that’s a scam right, they’re just gonna bill you every month”. Ok well it’s not a scam because it says subscription service $9.99 or whatever but most people are too distracted by the colors and lights that they just spin the wheel or whatever the thing is and check their cell for the “secret password for your results”, which of course is the pin activation which solidifies their subscription. Congratulations you just paid $9.99 for a bullshit automatically generated response. Here’s where it gets scary…So after she did the pin submit she clicked back like 5 times and was back on her facebook which is where she originally found the cell phone offer. I looked over and saw one of my ads…right away I felt like complete shit. I am pretty positive it was my offer she had just completed.

I actually don’t feel THAT bad considering most people are idiots if they don’t read the fine print when entering their credit card or any kind of subscription service, it’s there for a reason. Unfortunately in this world most people that make good money usually have to get dirty in some shape or form.

Oh and I’m not saying I’m stopping anything but it does make you think sometimes, trust me I still LOVE what I do.

Do you ever think about this? I know pay day loans are a big scam and I refuse to promote them because they can literally ruin peoples lives.